Sometimes they have allies.
Tough stuff.
Nicomachean Ethics IV.2: Magnificence
The following is probably the least interesting of Aristotle's virtues to most of us, simply because it is out of our range to do either well or badly. Magnificence is the greater of the 'spending virtues,' one that pertains to heavy expenses of the sort that only the truly rich can entertain. It is possible to do these well or badly, as with anything else. We can at least admire from afar the actions of a wealthy man who strives to use his wealth in ways that better everyone, as when Carnegie paid for public libraries to help everyone attain better access to learning and the classics. We can despise the misuses of great wealth. However, we can't do much to practice or habituate ourselves to this virtue one way or the other.
As such, I will mostly put this past a jump break. If you're wanting to skip something, this is a good section to leave for later. The next virtue, magnanimity, is of the very first importance and demands attention. Magnificence is a spectator sport for the vast majority.
It would seem proper to discuss magnificence next. For this also seems to be a virtue concerned with wealth; but it does not like liberality extend to all the actions that are concerned with wealth, but only to those that involve expenditure; and in these it surpasses liberality in scale. For, as the name itself suggests, it is a fitting expenditure involving largeness of scale. But the scale is relative; for the expense of equipping a trireme is not the same as that of heading a sacred embassy. It is what is fitting, then, in relation to the agent, and to the circumstances and the object. The man who in small or middling things spends according to the merits of the case is not called magnificent (e.g. the man who can say 'many a gift I gave the wanderer'), but only the man who does so in great things. For the magnificent man is liberal, but the liberal man is not necessarily magnificent. The deficiency of this state of character is called niggardliness, the excess vulgarity, lack of taste, and the like, which do not go to excess in the amount spent on right objects, but by showy expenditure in the wrong circumstances and the wrong manner; we shall speak of these vices later.
The Golden Spike
Like you, I was taught in grade school about 'the Golden Spike' that was driven in 1869 to celebrate the completion of America's transcontinental railroad. The National Park Service has a whole facility devoted to it if you're ever out that way.
Imagine my surprise, then, to read this morning that America has functionally not had a transcontinental railroad in spite of all of that.
For decades, a patchwork of regional rail networks across the United States have been forced to grapple with the same headache: Interchanges, where cargo is handed from one rail line to another.
Interchanges are one of the biggest friction points in freight logistics. They slow down the transport of goods that commonly travel on railroads--important products like lumber, food and fuel--while driving up shipping and supply chain costs for important industries like manufacturing, homebuilding, and retail. Ultimately, consumers foot the bill of the higher transport costs, exacerbating inflationary pressures on working-class Americans.
A long-anticipated answer to these problems arrived this week: the formation of America’s first coast-to-coast railroad via the industry-transforming merger of Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific railroads. By connecting over 50,000 miles of rail across 43 states and 100 ports, the transcontinental railroad will transform the U.S. supply chain to the benefit of businesses, manufacturers, consumers, and the American economy.
Union Pacific was one of the original participants in the 'Golden Spike' railroad; you'll see its name painted on one of the historic trains if you watch the movie. The physical railroad went all the way, but no institutional railroad ever did.
There are the usual concerns about monopolies, but the elimination of interchanges will offer a significant efficiency.
A neighborhood intervenes
A neighbor in this small community came to me last week for minor help with a notice to vacate tenancy, a first step towards pursuing an eviction in JP court. As she began to explain the background a bit I realized she needed an emergency intervention. After a sort of Eliza-escaping-over-the-ice weekend, she now has emergency custody of a granddaughter and an order barring an obstreperous family member from the premises. I've set up a GoFundMe account, to which my neighbors have begun contributing.I was very touched last Friday night, when the cops showed up, that a neighborhood handyman stood by until 11pm at a corner store, waiting for the all-clear to come over and change all my neighbor's locks. He stayed until 2am, then brought over his family to form a prayer circle. Since then other neighbors have kept an eye on the house and texted me pictures of anyone who parks in front
Local Scottish History
In North Carolina, it has long been believed that a group of backcountry Scottish immigrants declared independence from the King of England in 1775.
Primarily Scottish, many of the colonists were adherents to the Covenanted Reformed Presbyterian Church or related denominations, all of which emphasized that the temporal authority of kings and rulers was secondary to God’s, and to one’s own conscience. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.These “Covenanters” were soon presented with plenty of opportunities to test those beliefs.... On May 19, 1775, prominent citizens convened a meeting in Mecklenburg County, which according to Hardinger’s new book, “ One day revolution: the patriots who first declared independence,” was so small that there were only nine graves in the whole county at the time.As fate would have it, during the meeting, a messenger arrived with startling news — the battle of Lexington had been fought in the Massachusetts Bay Colony exactly one month earlier. Colonists skirmished with a large British force there, and in Concord, and won. It was only a minor strategic victory, but it galvanized anti-royalist sentiment and likely influenced the actions of the delegates at the Mecklenburg meeting.“These people are extremely angry,” Hardinger said. “They have a belief that says, ‘I can ignore an authority who is not doing what my conscience says is right,’ and so they’re right for doing this. The spark is the express rider that comes down on May 19.”What, exactly, happened in Charlotte late that night remains shrouded in mystery. The original copy of what would later be called the “Meck Dec” was purportedly lost in a fire in 1800 at the home of Joseph McNitt Alexander.
It's an unprovable tradition, but it is certainly plausible. The Covenanters had been openly at war with the Kings of England who were at the time Stuarts, therefore also the King of Scots by prior claim to their status as Kings of England. They had in fact seized control of Scotland from the kings in the Bishops War, so called because the Stuarts insisted on Anglican bishops as a necessary means of control. "No bishop, no king," Charles I is supposed to have said, which proved prescient as he lost the war and later his head. Covenanters provided troops to the war in which he lost his head, after also providing troops to support the Irish rebellion of 1641.
After the Restoration, Charles II raised an army of Highlanders and had them quartered upon the remaining Covenanters. There were significant further acts of violence during the "Killing Time" associated with the war of 1679, the Jacobite revolution of 1689, and several others. Large numbers were transported to the colonies.
The probability of this group having decided to go to guns against the King of England is pretty high. There's not positive proof that their declaration existed, but I wouldn't wager much against the proposition that it did.
Nicomachean Ethics IV.1b
The first chapter of Book IV continues. Yesterday we learned that liberality is more concerned with giving well than with taking; but the opposing vices concern both. We will see in the fullness of the analysis that giving still remains the most important.
The prodigal errs in these respects also; for he is neither pleased nor pained at the right things or in the right way; this will be more evident as we go on. We have said that prodigality and meanness are excesses and deficiencies, and in two things, in giving and in taking; for we include spending under giving. Now prodigality exceeds in giving and not taking, while meanness falls short in giving, and exceeds in taking, except in small things. The characteristics of prodigality are not often combined; for it is not easy to give to all if you take from none; private persons soon exhaust their substance with giving, and it is to these that the name of prodigals is applied- though a man of this sort would seem to be in no small degree better than a mean man.
Why is the prodigal better than the mean? Because his vice can't go on forever, and therefore won't.
For he is easily cured both by age and by poverty, and thus he may move towards the middle state. For he has the characteristics of the liberal man, since he both gives and refrains from taking, though he does neither of these in the right manner or well. Therefore if he were brought to do so by habituation or in some other way, he would be liberal; for he will then give to the right people, and will not take from the wrong sources. This is why he is thought to have not a bad character; it is not the mark of a wicked or ignoble man to go to excess in giving and not taking, but only of a foolish one. The man who is prodigal in this way is thought much better than the mean man both for the aforesaid reasons and because he benefits many while the other benefits no one, not even himself.
I'm going to put in a jump break for length, but if you skip the second part you will miss one of the more entertaining discussions.
Postcards from Way Outside Popular Culture
I gave up television in 2004, when I realized that I was only using our $80/month cable subscription to watch old cowboy movies on the Western Channel. In the ensuing two decades I haven't missed it, but I do find that I don't really know what's going on with cultural references. A few years ago, Cassandra of Villainous Company was making some remarks about Kate Upton; I couldn't understand why she was saying such things about the Princess of Wales, who had seemed nice enough when I read about her in the paper. Turns out there were two "Kate [Directional]ton" people, and one of them was a celebrity I didn't know about.
This week has been kind of like that. All of the blogs are talking about some old movie I vaguely recall having heard of but didn't see because it was a horror film. Only it turns out that was "Sweeny Todd," not "Sydney Sweeny," the latter of whom would have been seven years old when I quit watching TV.
OK, well, I know who she is now. People have a lot to say about how she looks, and you know, sure; she's a lovely young woman. But the most attractive thing about her to me is that she knows how to turn a wrench. I assumed on first viewing that the 1965 Mustang was a prop and that she had a stunt driver in this commercial.
Not at all: turns out she's a trained mechanic who modifies old Fords for fun. Apparently Ford had the sense to get her to collaborate on a new Mustang, too.
That's a cut above the kind of celebrity you usually hear about.
The Triton
The Triton a-sail.
Last week's quick run to the Deep South was occasioned by a chance to observe a demonstration of the Triton autonomous underwater and surface vehicle, which is becoming a US Navy Program of Record. It did so without going through the crazy, expensive Pentagon procurement process; it was built independently and then proved that it satisfied requirements by being subjected to intensive testing.
Submerging.
It's a pretty neat piece of kit. I won't go into details about its uses for obvious reasons, but I'm glad we are the ones who will have the thing.
Nicomachean Ethics IV.1a: Liberality
Book IV begins with an extremely long chapter that I will break into two parts. It has to do with the first of the 'spending virtues,' liberality. Now the word implies that one is bountiful and generous, but of course for Aristotle it is meant to be the mean between the extremes. Thus, the normal, natural position of a person should be generosity:
Let us speak next of liberality. It seems to be the mean with regard to wealth; for the liberal man is praised not in respect of military matters, nor of those in respect of which the temrate man is praised, nor of judicial decisions, but with regard to the giving and taking of wealth, and especially in respect of giving. Now by 'wealth' we mean all the things whose value is measured by money.
This might be surprising, especially for those who were raised to think of thrift as a virtue. However, it is the magic of the spirit behind capitalism that free exchange causes a flourishing that increases the wealth of all. Hoarded wealth does nothing, like the dragon's gold in the Beowulf that simply laid hidden in the earth for generations, doing no one any good. It's the exchanging that creates flourishing. If I take some of that wealth and spend it to hire an artist, my world now has beauty; if I pay for a meal, it has good food. The artist and the cook now have money they can spend to improve their lives and to yield to others the ability to improve theirs also.
This is a fecund understanding to have come from the ancient world, which was in positive terms much poorer than we are today. Even so, they already had the spirit of it: generosity is the natural position, the mean for which we should strive.
It is also surprising to hear prodigality discussed outside the Biblical context: the story of 'the prodigal son,' which frames our understanding for more than two centuries, was not available to Aristotle.
Further, prodigality and meanness are excesses and defects with regard to wealth; and meanness we always impute to those who care more than they ought for wealth, but we sometimes apply the word 'prodigality' in a complex sense; for we call those men prodigals who are incontinent and spend money on self-indulgence. Hence also they are thought the poorest characters; for they combine more vices than one. Therefore the application of the word to them is not its proper use; for a 'prodigal' means a man who has a single evil quality, that of wasting his substance; since a prodigal is one who is being ruined by his own fault, and the wasting of substance is thought to be a sort of ruining of oneself, life being held to depend on possession of substance.
This, then, is the sense in which we take the word 'prodigality'.
Thus prodigality is properly wasting one's substance, which means spending beyond what one can continue to support. It is not spending generously, but excessively.
Now the things that have a use may be used either well or badly; and riches is a useful thing; and everything is used best by the man who has the virtue concerned with it; riches, therefore, will be used best by the man who has the virtue concerned with wealth; and this is the liberal man.
Nicomachean Ethics III.12
This is the final chapter of Book III.
Self-indulgence is more like a voluntary state than cowardice. For the former is actuated by pleasure, the latter by pain, of which the one is to be chosen and the other to be avoided; and pain upsets and destroys the nature of the person who feels it, while pleasure does nothing of the sort. Therefore self-indulgence is more voluntary.
Is it true that pleasure does not 'upset and destroy the nature' of the person who experiences it? It seems as if sometimes it does; users of crystal meth, for example, often seem to come undone as a result of the pleasure they experience -- to the point that they will find their body covered in scabs and their teeth rotting out for lack of care.
Temperance isn't about pharmakon, though. It is about natural pleasures: food, drink, sex. Those pleasures might destroy you -- drink perhaps especially, but sex can too. They are still all less dangerous than the workings of sorcerers.
Hence also [self-indulgence] is more a matter of reproach [than cowardice]; for it is easier to become accustomed to its objects, since there are many things of this sort in life, and the process of habituation to them is free from danger, while with terrible objects the reverse is the case. But cowardice would seem to be voluntary in a different degree from its particular manifestations; for it is itself painless, but in these we are upset by pain, so that we even throw down our arms and disgrace ourselves in other ways; hence our acts are even thought to be done under compulsion. For the self-indulgent man, on the other hand, the particular acts are voluntary (for he does them with craving and desire), but the whole state is less so; for no one craves to be self-indulgent.
There's a reasonable point that you have a lot more power over the habituation process with self-indulgence, both because you have regular -- probably daily -- opportunities to practice temperance, and because you can do so in a state that is free from danger. Opportunities to be brave are much less common, and by nature entail a state of peril that can disrupt your reasoning. Thus, to the degree that you are self-indulgent you are especially blameworthy.
The name self-indulgence is applied also to childish faults; for they bear a certain resemblance to what we have been considering. Which is called after which, makes no difference to our present purpose; plainly, however, the later is called after the earlier. The transference of the name seems not a bad one; for that which desires what is base and which develops quickly ought to be kept in a chastened condition, and these characteristics belong above all to appetite and to the child, since children in fact live at the beck and call of appetite, and it is in them that the desire for what is pleasant is strongest. If, then, it is not going to be obedient and subject to the ruling principle, it will go to great lengths; for in an irrational being the desire for pleasure is insatiable even if it tries every source of gratification, and the exercise of appetite increases its innate force, and if appetites are strong and violent they even expel the power of calculation. Hence they should be moderate and few, and should in no way oppose the rational principle-and this is what we call an obedient and chastened state-and as the child should live according to the direction of his tutor, so the appetitive element should live according to rational principle.
Here we find an interesting insight: the child isn't expected to be temperate yet because they have not yet had their proper upbringing nor the opportunity to habituate temperance. The self-indulgent is thus possessed of a kind of immature character; they are analogously childish. They haven't grown up yet and put away childish things. The tutor of the child is meant to be replaced by the rational principle in us as adults; the proper upbringing is supposed to inculcate an understanding of what to practice as an adult. Once we develop the internal rule, we no longer need -- and should no longer want -- to be ruled from outside ourselves by others. The freedom of adulthood is won by this self-mastery.
Hence the appetitive element in a temperate man should harmonize with the rational principle; for the noble is the mark at which both aim, and the temperate man craves for the things be ought, as he ought, as when he ought; and when he ought; and this is what rational principle directs.Here we conclude our account of temperance.
Short and succinct compared to the long discussion of courage, but that is because courage serves as a model. Note that it was relatively easy to compare and contrast self-indulgence to cowardice, spell out how they are different, and then we can move on.
In Book IV we will encounter many more virtues.
From Your Lips to God's Ear
DOGE has built an automated/augmented intelligence bot with an astonishing goal.
The U.S. DOGE Service is using a new artificial intelligence tool to slash federal regulations, with the goal of eliminating half of Washington’s regulatory mandates by the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and four government officials familiar with the plans.The tool, called the “DOGE AI Deregulation Decision Tool,” is supposed to analyze roughly 200,000 federal regulations to determine which can be eliminated because they are no longer required by law, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post that is dated July 1 and outlines DOGE’s plans. Roughly 100,000 of those rules would be deemed worthy of trimming, the PowerPoint estimates — mostly through the automated tool with some staff feedback. The PowerPoint also suggests the AI tool will save the United States trillions of dollars by reducing compliance requirements, slashing the federal budget and unlocking unspecified “external investment.”
That would be amazing. Since these are administrative regulations, too, they don't require Congressional action in most cases.
A Brief Review
Jim Hanson would like to review best practices with close-quarter pistols.The story he is referencing is here.
Derrick Perry is a Sheepdog
— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) July 27, 2025
He saved lives
& did what few are prepared or willing to do
America thanks you
Now let's talk gun handling so the next time anyone has to do this
They do it the best way possible https://t.co/g01pvzbe8v pic.twitter.com/3x2o611JwQ
Another Evil Buzzword
This time the word is "mankeeping," which is I gather women having to care about their partners.
Much of the time, Mr. Lioi said, his straight male clients tell him that they rarely open up to anyone but their girlfriends or wives. Their partners have become their unofficial therapists, he said, “doing all the emotional labor.”That particular role now has a name: “mankeeping.” The term, coined by Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has taken off online. It describes the work women do to meet the social and emotional needs of the men in their lives, from supporting their partners through daily challenges and inner turmoil, to encouraging them to meet up with their friends.
I have frequently suggested that there is a significant downside to the intrusion of 'therapy' into every aspect of life; here is another aspect of it. Of course you should rely chiefly on your spouse for your emotional needs: in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, etc. That is the bargain, and of old it was understood that husband and wife were partners in all of life's highs and lows. It wasn't seen as "unofficial therapy," or any sort of therapy. It was marriage; it was life.
Therapy is properly limited to those who are recovering from injuries. Treating ordinary life as an ongoing source of injury -- indeed, usually as a source of "trauma"! -- has numerous bad follow-on effects. The implication here is that you should be paying somebody to 'treat' you for whatever daily difficulties you encounter. Otherwise, you're unfairly imposing on your spouse.
The strength of a marriage comes from learning that you can rely on each other. A marriage works because you become practiced in leaning on each other, and find a partner who will help you carry your weight. You, in turn, help them with their own.
I do think it's good to have friends; we talked about that not long ago. I wonder how quickly, though, these same women who are complaining about having to care for their partners would find themselves jealous if that emotional bonding was swapped outside of the marriage to another person.
US Concessions to EU
None, apparently. They will tax our goods at 0%, we'll tax theirs at 15%. $600BB in U.S. investments and $750BB in energy purchases, replacing Russia as the provider of Europe's liquefied natural gas.
I guess he is good at this deal-making thing. He understood the leverage, and explained it well enough that the EU sounded grateful to get out of this without it being worse for them.
RIP Tom Lehrer
I admit that I had not realized he was still alive; his work is well-known to me, but all of his famous pieces are from before I was born.
Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly iconoclastic songs made him a favorite satirist in the 1950s and ’60s on college campuses and in all the Greenwich Villages of the country, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.... Mr. Lehrer’s lyrics were nimble, sometimes salacious and almost always sardonic, sung to music that tended to be maddeningly cheerful.
Let's have a few of them in memoriam.
There are a whole lot more, if you like the form. These are all national security oriented, which is how they originally came across my desk (as it were). There are plenty that are not.
Nicomachean Ethics III.11
Of the appetites some seem to be common, others to be peculiar to individuals and acquired; e.g. the appetite for food is natural, since every one who is without it craves for food or drink, and sometimes for both, and for love also (as Homer says) if he is young and lusty; but not every one craves for this or that kind of nourishment or love, nor for the same things. Hence such craving appears to be our very own.
That is straightforward enough.
Yet [this craving of one's own] has of course something natural about it; for different things are pleasant to different kinds of people, and some things are more pleasant to every one than chance objects. Now in the natural appetites few go wrong, and only in one direction, that of excess; for to eat or drink whatever offers itself till one is surfeited is to exceed the natural amount, since natural appetite is the replenishment of one's deficiency.
This isn't strictly true, as we see e.g. in cases of anorexia, but he is correct that almost everyone only goes wrong in being excessive.
Hence these people are called belly-gods, this implying that they fill their belly beyond what is right. It is people of entirely slavish character that become like this.
There is a term that we might usefully recover: belly-gods!
Aristotle believes in natural slavery, by which he means that some people are fitted out by their natures only to be slaves. Here is an example of someone who might be that way, because they are incapable of controlling even their most basic impulses.
However, I note that in Iraq I observed that the very few genuinely obese men I met were sheikhs of one sort or another. In many cultures the ability to become fat is a demonstration of power, and a proof of command rather than slavishness. I wonder if Aristotle is merely encultured to the Greek approach here.
But with regard to the pleasures peculiar to individuals many people go wrong and in many ways.
Our age has filled books on this topic -- mostly autobiographies by people proud of their errors.
For while the people who are 'fond of so and so' are so called because they delight either in the wrong things, or more than most people do, or in the wrong way, the self-indulgent exceed in all three ways; they both delight in some things that they ought not to delight in (since they are hateful), and if one ought to delight in some of the things they delight in, they do so more than one ought and than most men do.
So, that's important to enumerate.
Ways to go wrong in desire for food/drink/sex:
1) Delighting in the wrong things, which are hateful things.
2) Delighting too much in the right things.
3) Delighting in the right things, but in the wrong way.
4) Doing all three of these at once ("self-indulgence").
Note another partial ad populum appeal: "more than one ought to and than most men do." There is a logos, sometimes, that lets us know what one 'ought' to do; but we must in other cases appeal to what is normal. Our culture has rejected both of those approaches: it rejects a logos based on any sort of human telos, and also rejects the idea that what is normal -- say, not being transgender -- should be a standard that is in any way binding. That's a challenge, particularly on matters of temperance (which, again, include all sexual pleasures).
Plainly, then, excess with regard to pleasures is self-indulgence and is culpable; with regard to pains one is not, as in the case of courage, called temperate for facing them or self-indulgent for not doing so, but the self-indulgent man is so called because he is pained more than he ought at not getting pleasant things (even his pain being caused by pleasure), and the temperate man is so called because he is not pained at the absence of what is pleasant and at his abstinence from it.The self-indulgent man, then, craves for all pleasant things or those that are most pleasant, and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else; hence he is pained both when he fails to get them and when he is merely craving for them (for appetite involves pain); but it seems absurd to be pained for the sake of pleasure.
There's a sort of non-logical contradiction, which is an odd entity: contradictions really only belong to logic, not to ethics in which strict logic doesn't (because it cannot) apply. This absurdity is thus analogous to a contradiction rather than a true contradiction (pace Hegel, who built his entire moral philosophy around 'contradictions' of this sort). Aristotle seems to have synthesized the law of non-contradiction into a form that we still use today and in a way that was central to his metaphysics, so even an analogy to a contradiction strikes him as absurd and offensive.
People who fall short with regard to pleasures and delight in them less than they should are hardly found; for such insensibility is not human. Even the other animals distinguish different kinds of food and enjoy some and not others; and if there is any one who finds nothing pleasant and nothing more attractive than anything else, he must be something quite different from a man; this sort of person has not received a name because he hardly occurs.
There are enough of them these days that they have a flag and several names for variants. There are a lot more people now, however, so even that which 'hardly occurs' will occur when there are eight billion instances.
The temperate man occupies a middle position with regard to these objects. For he neither enjoys the things that the self-indulgent man enjoys most-but rather dislikes them-nor in general the things that he should not, nor anything of this sort to excess, nor does he feel pain or craving when they are absent, or does so only to a moderate degree, and not more than he should, nor when he should not, and so on; but the things that, being pleasant, make for health or for good condition, he will desire moderately and as he should, and also other pleasant things if they are not hindrances to these ends, or contrary to what is noble, or beyond his means. For he who neglects these conditions loves such pleasures more than they are worth, but the temperate man is not that sort of person, but the sort of person that the right rule prescribes.
This having become so foundational a standard of Judeo-Christian ethics, it hardly needs elaboration.
Tribute to Ozzy
From the album Black and Bluegrass: A Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne
And a little Metallica from the same band
Movement Toward a Post-Literate Society
I've gone on in comments a bit about how many teens and twenty-somethings have trouble reading more than a few paragraphs or maybe a couple of pages and so university professors have, in general, adapted by giving shorter and shorter readings for classes.
Now the College Board has followed suit with the SAT and it looks like the ACT is making similar changes.*
The College Board notes on page 13 of its Digital SAT Suite of Assessments technical framework that two of the primary goals in changing the exam were to make it shorter and to give students more time per question. To make this happen in the new “Reading and Writing” section of the test, they shortened reading passages from 500-750 words all the way down to 25-150 words, or the length of a social-media post, with one question per passage. Their explanation is that this model “operates more efficiently when choices about what test content to deliver are made in small rather than larger units.”
...
Finally, the optional essay was eliminated completely.
The math section has been made easier over the last 15 years as well.
*Although the author of the article is Michael Torres, the policy director for the Classic Learning Test (CLT), which is trying to compete with the SAT and ACT, the SAT published the changes and defends them.
Public Accommodations
Having been born in Atlanta where the issue was important at the time, I grew up understanding that a 'public accommodation' can't discriminate in choosing whom it serves. You used to see signs in businesses asserting that 'We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason,' but in fact the government held that they had no such right to reserve. At issue was whether the future governor's restaurant could refuse to serve black customers.
By the 1960s the Pickrick had expanded to feed 400 diners - all white. And that made Maddox a target for African-American protest. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it also brought him into conflict with the federal law. But it made him a hero to white working-class Georgians and small businessmen, who bitterly resented being told what to do by Washington.Contrary to mythology, Maddox never beat any black people, though the day after the passage of the act, he did dent the roof of a black minister's car. He also waved a pistol and was put on trial on gun charges, but was acquitted by an all-white jury. In the summer of 1964, Maddox organised a rally in Atlanta for George Wallace and also for Calvin Craig, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.To liberals, Maddox became an ugly symbol of southern "redneck" racism. To himself, and to many of his customers, the issue was not about race but about freedom. He saw himself as a small businessman whose rights over his property were being taken from him. When he closed his restaurant, rather than allow blacks to eat there as ordered by a federal injunction, he said that "my president, my Congress and the communists have closed my business and ended a childhood dream".
Maddox lost that fight, even though he later did become governor. The principle was enshrined in the law, specifically Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This all leads me to ask, is Uber a public accommodation?
Uber is piloting a new option for its U.S. app that will allow female passengers to request women drivers, coming after the company has long grappled with preventing sexual assault on its platform.
The feature, called Women Preferences, will launch in a pilot stage in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit in the next few weeks, Uber said in a blog post on Wednesday. It marks the first time the popular rideshare app is bringing this option to its service in the United States after launching it in 40 other countries.
Uber joins Lyft and other taxi hailing apps, like HERide and Just Her Rideshare, that connect female passengers with women drivers.
Women drivers on Uber can also refuse to pick up men, or those who look like men.
I don't really mind the notion because I agree that we should allow women reasonable steps to protect their safety. These don't have to turn on blanket sex discrimination. Uber, for example, already allows drivers to rate their passengers as well as the other way around, giving drivers information about the quality of the ride they might be asked to deliver. I don't often use Uber since there is no such thing way out here, but on the rare occasion that I have used it in cities I have maintained my 5.0 rating as a passenger by being courteous and tipping well. If you look at that rating you will have a reasonable confidence that picking me up will be a pleasant experience even though I am quite completely male.
There is a broader social issue at work. Conservative women (mostly) have been fighting a pitched battle to defend female-only spaces. Although these are not themselves 'public accommodations' they often exist in the context of things that are: locker rooms in gymnasia or restrooms in hotel restaurants, for example. There seems to be some hedge for allowing sex discrimination as long as it is pointed always in the one direction of excluding males.
The Babylon Bee's got jokes (and about Ozzy and Hulk and Gaza too!), but I always wonder with our anti-discrimination laws if there is actually a real principle at work or not. Straight white males seem to be readily subject to discrimination in hiring, education, accommodation and now getting a ride back to the hotel from that meeting. LGBT folk face at least some discrimination, being formally unprotected. Even Black men are now subject to this ride discrimination thing in what seems like a 'public accommodation,' and they were the original class that Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 intended to protect.
Does the law mean anything, or are we still just playing favorites? It's hard to discern anything remotely like 'equality' in the way these things keep playing out.
Requiescant in Pace
It was not a surprise to learn that Ozzy Osbourne had died after his farewell concert, which was only seventeen days before his death. That was exactly how Lemmy Kilmister had finished his life, down to the number of days as I understand it.
I was surprised to read that Hulk Hogan had died yesterday, however. Terry Gene Bollea, rather, the actor who played Hulk Hogan -- although it was doubtless the Hulk's character that brought about the steroid use and physical injuries that led to his many surgeries and heart condition.
May they rest in peace. They were both important figures in my youth, and Ozzy long before that; he was making some of his best music before I was born, and much of the rest while I was too young to appreciate it yet.
Hanging Journalists
You can read the article the poster wanted to hang him over here, if you are so inclined. I've never met nor spoken with Mr. Stephens, but he is fielding some of the same arguments that I have myself. I take them to be honest considerations, and would hate to see even a New York Times journalist hanged over speaking what they see as the truth. Others may oppose the truth by giving their own arguments; and in defense of the Times' honor on this point, I believe that they publish at least one view opposing that one every day. Here is today's; and here is a collection of letters on both sides in response to Stephen's piece. One of them points out that the US killed 200,000 people with one bomb in Japan to force a surrender; Richard Fernandez today raises a similar point about the use of starvation to force that surrender.
Of course, if you're trying to 'globalize the intifada,' I suppose killing anyone anywhere is all right if it advances the cause. Journalists and even bloggers like Fernandez or myself are no exceptions. Death comes for all; war sometimes does too.
Nicomachean Ethics III.10
After courage let us speak of temperance; for these seem to be the virtues of the irrational parts. We have said that temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures (for it is less, and not in the same way, concerned with pains); self-indulgence also is manifested in the same sphere.
'The virtues of the irrational parts' of the soul, that is; but of course the virtues are not themselves part of the irrational part of the soul. They are the rational parts of the soul that control the irrational parts. Courage, as you have read several times now, is concerned with fear of pains to include wounds and death; temperance, principally with pleasures not to be over-indulged.
Aquinas' promotion of temperance over courage makes sense even on Aristotle's own terms when you remember that Aquinas pointed out that most people are more motivated by pleasure than pain; recall the talk about Helen at the gates.
Now, therefore, let us determine with what sort of pleasures they are concerned. We may assume the distinction between bodily pleasures and those of the soul, such as love of honour and love of learning; for the lover of each of these delights in that of which he is a lover, the body being in no way affected, but rather the mind; but men who are concerned with such pleasures are called neither temperate nor self-indulgent.
Indeed, the love of seeking that most worthy of honor is magnanimity, which is going to prove to be the capstone and crown of virtue. So: the high pleasures of the soul, especially to include living in a way that is most worthy of honor, should not be tempered but embraced.
There are other things people find pleasant that should not be, even though they are not bodily pleasures:
Nor, again, are those who are concerned with the other pleasures that are not bodily; for those who are fond of hearing and telling stories and who spend their days on anything that turns up are called gossips, but not self-indulgent, nor are those who are pained at the loss of money or of friends.
The Stoics might suggest that allowing yourself to be pained at the loss of money or friends is irrational, but grief over the loss of friends falls within Aristotle's quite large concession to friendship as part of the good life. Marcus Aurelias would remind you that you always knew your friends were mortal; but for Aristotle, life without friends is much impoverished because it degrades the life of one's own mind by removing another self in whose good you can also find happiness, which is the end of ethics.
Temperance must be concerned with bodily pleasures, but not all even of these; for those who delight in objects of vision, such as colours and shapes and painting, are called neither temperate nor self-indulgent; yet it would seem possible to delight even in these either as one should or to excess or to a deficient degree.And so too is it with objects of hearing; no one calls those who delight extravagantly in music or acting self-indulgent, nor those who do so as they ought temperate.Nor do we apply these names to those who delight in odour, unless it be incidentally; we do not call those self-indulgent who delight in the odour of apples or roses or incense, but rather those who delight in the odour of unguents or of dainty dishes; for self-indulgent people delight in these because these remind them of the objects of their appetite. And one may see even other people, when they are hungry, delighting in the smell of food; but to delight in this kind of thing is the mark of the self-indulgent man; for these are objects of appetite to him.
You may note the oddity of Aristotle referring so much to the common judgment: 'no one calls...' is argumentum ad populum. Aristotle was not concerned with what would later come to be called the informal fallacies; his considerations on logic generally point at formal logic, which isn't appropriate to ethics (EN I.3 again). He discusses the issue somewhat in the Rhetoric, especially in Book I, but there he is talking about enthymemes rather than strict logical arguments. "However, where the general premise of a syllogism is supposed to be true, making the subsequent deduction necessary, the general premise of an enthymeme is merely probable, which leads only to a tentative conclusion," thus making them proper for ethical/political arguments.
Nor is there in animals other than man any pleasure connected with these senses, except incidentally. For dogs do not delight in the scent of hares, but in the eating of them, but the scent told them the hares were there; nor does the lion delight in the lowing of the ox, but in eating it; but he perceived by the lowing that it was near, and therefore appears to delight in the lowing; and similarly he does not delight because he sees 'a stag or a wild goat', but because he is going to make a meal of it.
This psychology of animals is entirely speculative; I personally think dogs seem to delight greatly in the scent of hares, even when the hare is long gone and there is no chance of eating one. I've known dogs who chased rabbits with great pleasure even if they wouldn't hurt it once they caught it, just because they loved to chase them.
Temperance and self-indulgence, however, are concerned with the kind of pleasures that the other animals share in, which therefore appear slavish and brutish; these are touch and taste. But even of taste they appear to make little or no use; for the business of taste is the discriminating of flavours, which is done by winetasters and people who season dishes; but they hardly take pleasure in making these discriminations, or at least self-indulgent people do not, but in the actual enjoyment, which in all cases comes through touch, both in the case of food and in that of drink and in that of sexual intercourse. This is why a certain gourmand prayed that his throat might become longer than a crane's, implying that it was the contact that he took pleasure in.
So, food and drink and sex is what we're really interested in here. These do often tend to get people in trouble.
Thus the sense with which self-indulgence is connected is the most widely shared of the senses; and self-indulgence would seem to be justly a matter of reproach, because it attaches to us not as men but as animals. To delight in such things, then, and to love them above all others, is brutish. For even of the pleasures of touch the most liberal have been eliminated, e.g. those produced in the gymnasium by rubbing and by the consequent heat; for the contact characteristic of the self-indulgent man does not affect the whole body but only certain parts.
We don't usually think of the self-indulgent as being especially inclined to the gymnasium, and Aristotle seems willing to grant that exception. I do think that there may be exceptions to this exception, however; but that is a topic for another time.
Nicomachean Ethics III.9, Courage III: Paradoxes about Courage
The final chapter on the virtue of courage is short, but it contains some paradoxes that are interesting to consider.
Though courage is concerned with feelings of confidence and of fear, it is not concerned with both alike, but more with the things that inspire fear; for he who is undisturbed in face of these and bears himself as he should towards these is more truly brave than the man who does so towards the things that inspire confidence. It is for facing what is painful, then, as has been said, that men are called brave. Hence also courage involves pain, and is justly praised; for it is harder to face what is painful than to abstain from what is pleasant.
One thing Aristotle has already said is that which of the two extremes is more important to avoid can vary both by virtue and by individual. For those who incline to the Nameless Vice of the Celts (such as apparently myself), or for the sanguine, it is much more important to attend to the things that justly ought to be feared than to the things that inspire confidence. Confidence is the problem in such cases. The virtue of courage for such people lies in taking care to be appropriately fearful.
That conflict is mild, though, compared to those that follow. He starts with an easy example, boxing (which was a slightly different sport of extreme popularity in Ancient Greece):
Yet the end which courage sets before it would seem to be pleasant, but to be concealed by the attending circumstances, as happens also in athletic contests; for the end at which boxers aim is pleasant- the crown and the honours- but the blows they take are distressing to flesh and blood, and painful, and so is their whole exertion; and because the blows and the exertions are many the end, which is but small, appears to have nothing pleasant in it.
If you have done it, you know how little you even think of the small reward of glory during the moment of taking blows in a sport-fighting contest. Your mind does attune to the tactics of victory over the particular opponent, but doesn't even think of the 'end' of receiving a medal or belt. Thus, the pleasant end is not even the goal (telos) of the action any longer, yet it has to be said to still be the motivating end. The means-to-the-end becomes the immediate goal, with the final goal no longer a consideration for the moment.
And so, if the case of courage is similar, death and wounds will be painful to the brave man and against his will, but he will face them because it is noble to do so or because it is base not to do so. And the more he is possessed of virtue in its entirety and the happier he is, the more he will be pained at the thought of death; for life is best worth living for such a man, and he is knowingly losing the greatest goods, and this is painful. But he is none the less brave, and perhaps all the more so, because he chooses noble deeds of war at that cost.
This is the great paradox: the braver the man, the more painful the pain of death and wounds becomes. He thus has to be even braver to face these even more painful losses, because he is sacrificing something -- the very best kind of human life -- that lesser men don't have to lose. Many of them may live lives that aren't very enjoyable or happy at all; they may be from that place where (as Chesterton puts it) 'the perverse in pleasure pine and men are weary of green wine, and sick of crimson seas.' For them death could even be a release, and an honorable death much to be chosen if it gave both release and honor.
For the truly brave and virtuous man, the virtue ends up conveying much less good, and much more pain: and yet he is the best case for the perfection of the virtue.
It is not the case, then, with all the virtues that the exercise of them is pleasant, except in so far as it reaches its end. But it is quite possible that the best soldiers may be not men of this sort but those who are less brave but have no other good; for these are ready to face danger, and they sell their life for trifling gains.So much, then, for courage; it is not difficult to grasp its nature in outline, at any rate, from what has been said.
Next up is temperance, a virtue that the later Christian Aristotelians especially loved to discuss.
UPDATE: On the subject of that last remark, courage suffers a significant downgrade in Aquinas' adjustment of Aristotle's ethics. Whereas it is the exemplary virtue for Aristotle, Aquinas demotes it somewhat. He mentions it in Summa Theologica Prima Secundæ Partis, and really gets into to it in Secunda Secundæ Partis. Here courage is renamed 'fortitude,' from fortis or strength, and is associated with the capacity to attain martyrdom. It is named as one of the cardinal moral virtues, along with Temperance, Justice, and Prudence.
That said, once you've mastered Aristotle's ethics you will find that the basic structure survives into Aquinas and therefore into Catholic moral teaching. For example, compare Aquinas' remarks on the voluntary and the involuntary and with what you've read of Aristotle's, and you'll see a great deal of continuity. The basic structure survives, and thus all the groundwork required to understand Aristotle is immediately useful in understanding the High Medieval moral teachings.
Republicans notice
The MSM has suddenly decided to cover the Obama treason story, but in the David Burge sense: covering it with a blanket until it stops moving. The first stories I've seen appeared last night and this morning in the WSJ and NYT, with the time-honored "without evidence" modifiers. Both are behind paywalls, so I won't attempt to link. The gist is that the GOP needs a distraction from Epstein and made up a story out of whole cloth for the purpose. I mean, who would do such a thing? Showing extra courage, the WSJ left off any comment link.
Travel
I am taking a short business trip today and tomorrow. Hopefully I will be back tomorrow night, but air travel in high summer is dodgy. Wish me luck.
UPDATE (Wednesday evening): That went about as well as you could ask for a run to the Deep South at this time of year. Only one flight delay, out of the four legs, and I got in eventually. Good trip.
Shin Godzilla and Japanese Political Sentiment
Due to the insistence of a young relative, I recently watched the 2016 movie Shin Godzilla. I started out watching just to do something with him, but it turns out the movie is a great reflection of Japanese sentiment about their own politics and Japanese-US relations, with some jabs at the international community thrown in. Godzilla was always a political comment, a kind of Japanese Frankenstein story about nuclear power, sometimes with an implied criticism of nuclear weapons and the US, but this movie throws it in the viewers' faces. It's a political rant with a monster in the background. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Maybe at some point I'll set aside some time to write about what's happening in Japanese politics right now with the rise of apparently Trump-inspired "far right" populist parties, but if you want an entertaining overview of what many Japanese are feeling, the movie is a really good start, I think.
Some quick notes:
During the US occupation of Japan, we wrote their current constitution. Article 9 of that constitution bars Japan from having a military and the US promised to protect Japan. Nevertheless, the Japanese established Self-Defense Forces (SDF), which look very much like a military. Paradoxically, they did this partly at US insistence when we turned our attention to the Cold War and stopped worrying that Japan would re-arm and try to rebuild their lost empire.
After WWII, a very strong pacifist sentiment developed, so the creation of the SDF was challenged. It went to their supreme court with the final ruling being that Japan can have forces to defend itself from invasion, but nothing that could be used to project power. There are many legal restrictions on their use and capabilities. Japan cannot legally have aircraft carriers, for example, because they are tools for force projection and not considered purely defensive.
As for the movie, the ending didn't quite seem genuine to me and I wonder if establishment politics didn't get involved in this rather anti-establishment political statement. But I'll save that for a possible future post.
Meanwhile, here's the trailer and then the greatest song ever written about Godzilla.
A Hopeful Note from the Grateful Dead
Jerry Garcia's politics were not all that political; as the article explains, he disdained politicians and avoided their campaigns for power and office. He had what strikes me as a hopeful vision of America:
Mr. Garcia lived among artists and built up a community around him that was, psychologically and in some ways practically, impervious to government power.... He admired those who also lived beyond the government’s authority — the Black Panthers and the Hells Angels, to name two groups — though Mr. Garcia did not so much confront the government as simply refuse to accept its authority over him.The government’s power, he insisted, was “illusory,” a myth that took real form only because people accepted it. “The government,” Mr. Garcia said, “is not in a position of power in this country.”
I think there is something to that. The government is not entirely without power, but it extends much less far than the government itself wishes it did. We see little enough of them here in the mountains.
Nicomachean Ethics III.8: Courage II
Continuing from Friday, more of Aristotle's thoughts on courage. Today Aristotle wants to talk about things that are sometimes called courage, but that he doesn't think are the genuine article.
Courage, then, is something of this sort, but the name is also applied to five other kinds.First comes the courage of the citizen-soldier; for this is most like true courage. Citizen-soldiers seem to face dangers because of the penalties imposed by the laws and the reproaches they would otherwise incur, and because of the honours they win by such action; and therefore those peoples seem to be bravest among whom cowards are held in dishonour and brave men in honour. This is the kind of courage that Homer depicts, e.g. in Diomede and in Hector:First will Polydamas be to heap reproach on me then; andFor Hector one day 'mid the Trojans shall utter his vaultingharangue:Afraid was Tydeides, and fled from my face.This kind of courage is most like to that which we described earlier, because it is due to virtue; for it is due to shame and to desire of a noble object (i.e. honour) and avoidance of disgrace, which is ignoble. One might rank in the same class even those who are compelled by their rulers; but they are inferior, inasmuch as they do what they do not from shame but from fear, and to avoid not what is disgraceful but what is painful; for their masters compel them, as Hector does:But if I shall spy any dastard that cowers far from the fight,Vainly will such an one hope to escape from the dogs.And those who give them their posts, and beat them if they retreat, do the same, and so do those who draw them up with trenches or something of the sort behind them; all of these apply compulsion. But one ought to be brave not under compulsion but because it is noble to be so.
In our time and country, we tend to think of the citizen-soldier as the ideal exemplar of courage. Ours differ somewhat from the ancient Greek and Trojan cases in that we have an all-volunteer military; thus, our fighting men and women are in fact choosing military service freely rather than being compelled by laws to serve. This makes them better than the citizen-soldiers that Aristotle is talking about on his own terms. He would likely have admired those who elect to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, knowingly choosing an especially hard service; or those who choose the Army's combat arms. The portions of the service for which you must volunteer multiple times -- for example special operations or Airborne, where you have to volunteer first for the service and then again for the hard selection process -- would have drawn his admiration and approval, I think.
We do share his disdain for citizen-soldiers of nations that assign their NCOs or officers to kill any soldiers who don't press forward, as the Soviets were said to do in WWII. We generally agree, I think, that service under such compulsion is less noble and more based in fear than true courage. I also think that we tend to sneer at the indiscipline of such an army, or such a nation as cannot command loyalty from love instead of tyranny.
Hector is usually considered a noble figure, but it is true that in the end he flees from Achilles. (Iliad XXII). Achilles is the favorite Greek example, but he had an unfair advantage that kept him from harm in almost all circumstances; I think of Odysseus as the best example of Greek courage because his courage was coupled with practical wisdom. This question is debated between Socrates and the Sophist Hippias in the Lesser Hippias or Hippias Minor, in which Socrates takes the position that Odysseus was the greater; philosophers usually treat that document as ironic or a reductio ad absurdum, but I think there is a serious point being made therein.
More after the jump; this is a longer chapter.
The NYT Validates MAGA
I'm beginning to suspect that there may be something to the President's charge that at least part of the Epstein story is a scam; and the reason I think so is that the whole of the media is piling onto it the way they have done with other Uniparty-backed scams. Today, for what I think is the first time ever, the New York Times published a piece asserting that MAGA has a valid complaint about something.
For those who don't want to read the whole thing, on the question we have been especially interested in -- whether there were intelligence ties, and if so to whose agency -- the reporter interviewed is agnostic. She says she is aware of the theories, but has no facts herself on which to base any reporting. They do mention Maxwell's father's ties to Israeli intelligence and Mossad, so they aren't trying to hide from that, but there just isn't enough information in public for reporting -- just for speculation of the sort we have been doing.
The No Banter Bill
Britain's House of Lords proposes banning pub banter. As The Free Press points out, this is on top of some pretty substantial existing bans on speech:
If the bill goes into law in its current form—and there is not much to stop it now—Britons can be prosecuted for a remark that a worker in a public space overhears and finds insulting. The law will apply to pubs, clubs, restaurants, soccer grounds, and all the other places where the country gathers and, all too frequently, ridicules one another....[S]exual harassment and workplace harassment are already unlawful in Britain. So are “spreading malicious rumors,” “picking on or regularly undermining someone,” and “denying someone’s training or promotion opportunities” on grounds of age, sex, disability, gender reassignment, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion, or belief, or sexual orientation. The Equality Act of 2010 also makes employers primarily responsible for preventing the “bullying and harassment” of employees by other employees.Where the Banter Bill strikes new ground is by making employers liable for employees’ feelings about their customers, too. It will allow employees to define “harassment” under the lowest of thresholds: taking offense.
Expect that in California soon, I guess. The new frontier for 'free speech' is not being allowed to say anything anyone finds offensive in public (or online).
Immigration "reform"
As a nation, we scarcely have an immigration policy--certainly nothing that commands any widespread consensus. My own views on immigration have been all over the map over the decades. Congress makes noises about "comprehensive" reform, which seems to be a euphemism for legislating the border out of existence. Before the second Trump administration we routinely heard that the existing legislative structure was unsustainable, though conservatives argued that it was merely unenforced, a conclusion that seems to have been borne out by events of the last six months.I used to be rather a fan of amnesty for anyone with a clean rap sheet and a credible work record. Later, I came to believe that there must be a third requirement, which was demonstrating that the illegal immigrant was not on the dole. I believe we cannot have both open borders and a welfare state. I concluded some time back that the welfare state can't be eliminated, at least for citizens, which left only sealing the border to all but immigrants we reasonably concluded were not here for the purpose of launching a criminal career and/or a lifetime habit of going on the dole.In the background, there always were the arguments about the impact of cheap illegal immigrant labor on the wage scale for working citizens, especially on the low end of the scale. These arguments echoed the endless debate over the minimum wage. I've never favored a minimum wage, believing it only converts low-paying jobs into outright unemployment. As a result, I was never swayed much by complaints, coming from the progressive side of the debate in the past, that the real problem with open borders (legal or otherwise) was the downward pressure on wages, and my views didn't change when, to my surprise, the same argument was embraced by the newly populist GOP.My views changed when it became obvious that the solution proposed for the downward pressure on wages was to blow the doors off the welfare state. Imagine my amazement when Congress began to inch toward legislation withholding welfare from illegal immigrants and beginning to deport them in serious numbers.I read an article today accusing the GOP of misrepresenting its rationale for deporting illegal immigrants. The thinking goes: we can't deport immigrants because we can't get citizens to do their jobs at the prices employers want to pay. But hasn't that always been the argument for the minimum wage? Who says employers are entitled to a supply of laborers who are willing to work for an infinitely low wage? If the business can't be sustained without workers willing to work at that low wage, the business will not stay in business. Whatever Americans wanted offered at that price won't be available. That's always been true; it's why we can't afford house-servants of the sort that rich people used to think were necessary to a civilized life. Nor are we likely to solve the problem by making up the difference by paying lots more taxes so that impoverished workers can afford to work for us and still have a lot of basic but expensive needs met by welfare. We can't legislate a free lunch into existence; anything "free" is paid for somewhere, by someone. Not even confiscating all the wealth of Bill Gates or Elon Musk will change that more than temporarily.What I'm left with is this: we'll find out what jobs free Americans will do at the price employers can afford to pay. If those jobs can't be done, we'll figure out how to adjust to new prices for goods and services that used to be available to us at the old price, which depended on a combination of crippling levels of taxes to support a welfare state and unfair employer leverage over a workforce required to live in the shadows. We'll alter our priorities about the goods and services we are and are not willing to forgo. Maybe we can't have as many avocados or houses as large as have become customary in recent decades. But also maybe a lot of teenagers and adults new to the workforce will be able to find work for a change. People don't tend to stay in entry-level jobs at entry-level wages forever, but they sure can stay in the unemployed welfare underclass forever.
The power of the eternal purse
I knew progressives would be unhappy with the rescission bill, but I didn't understand that they would consider it a reversal of the constitutional order:
Our Constitution gives Congress the ‘power of the purse’ for a reason. It ensures federal spending is controlled by people’s elected representatives, not an all-powerful executive. It’s a crucial check against the expansion of presidential power.
This rescissions bill fundamentally alters that balance.
Republicans, including President Trump, enacted a funding bill that included this money for foreign aid and public broadcasting only months ago. Then they reversed course and voted to cut those programs. By walking back those commitments, congressional Republicans showed, yet again, they will refuse to stand up to President Trump, even for things they support.This seems off-base. If Congress can approve spending, why shouldn't it also be able to cancel it? The real rub seems to be that rescission operates like a delayed line-item veto, which undermines the ability to approve spending favored by only one party by holding hostage spending critical to the other party.Now there is much wailing over the fact that Congressional factions can no longer count on spending "deals" to be binding. There is more talk than I can ever before remember hearing about Democrats' shutting down the government. I'm not sure how effective a strategy that is, since the party in power can designate essential spending to survive, which is not a power I'd want to give to the DOGE factions if I were leading the Dems in Congress.
Bad Habituation
As we rest over the weekend after considering Aristotle's remarks on bad habits and character, a song celebrating how they can tie us to who we used to be before the crazy years began. That too is an Aristotelian point: for better and for worse, our character is who we are. It hold us together.
MRI trauma
My husband got a routine MRI this week and reported considerable annoyance at the number of times he was forced to answer the same questions about whether he had any metal implants. I like this radiological imaging center, but they do indulge in some repetitive questioning. Before they even got a chance to pepper him with inquiries, they'd already made me answer the same questions at length when I called to make his appointment.Then a story like this comes along and makes you imagine how obsessed they must get with checking and re-checking and practically guarding the doors to make sure no one wanders in unawares. Those magnets are unbelievably strong.John Ringo wrote an entertaining novel called "Von Neuman's War" about a attack by alien bots bent on stripping metal out of people and machines. Earth's citizens had to get serious about tooth fillings, braces, and medical implants.
Son of a Gun
Playing around with a pistol with bad trigger discipline makes me very uncomfortable, but the song isn't awful. I was wondering if the title was performing blasphemy (as is common to the point of banality among musicians and artists), but no, he put out a fairly straightforward explanation of his intent:
Jesus wasn’t the only crucified son. There were 2 others with him. Some say there were 4. The soldiers gambled for the clothes of these so called thieves on the ground right in front of Jesus and then watched him up there a while. In the Third Servile War the Romans crucified Spartacus and 6,000 of his followers along the Appian Road. All because the empire feared a slave. It’s estimated as many as six hundred thousand were crucified during the Roman Empire alone. Some folks have let me know they don’ think my song is in good taste. Most recently I was accused of comparing myself to Jesus. Well I know a lot of people who bare the cross that never learned a thing from the trials of Jesus. Handing out scripture and verse like they wrote it themselves. The first time I ever got sold out it was by my own kin. Then I got in the music business. lol. If they crucified a man like Jesus just imagine what they’ll do to you.
Fair enough, I suppose. The point of the incarnation was to be like us, and as he points out, a whole lot of us were crucified too. Every time but one it was just some regular men doing it to another.
Attempted Theft 2016
A very significant release by DNI Tulsi Gabbard. In a way it’s nothing we didn’t know; but in another way, it’s a whole set of new evidence for what we came to know a while back.
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